Starting Up Again... DALAT overview

I'm back in Brooklyn, but thought I'd post some raw excerpts as I start writing up the various sections for the rest of my online guide...


DALAT: HILL TOWN OF THE SOUTH
Only a century old, Dalat has long been the place – for French colonials at odds in the tropics, Vietnam’s last king looking for hunting grounds, communist-era locals on honeymoon – to go to get away from the Vietnam day-to-day. In the last 15 years or so, guidebooks have put Dalat at par with other itinerary staples as Nha Trang and Hoi An, but not all visitors are equally swayed by its gentle green mountains, brisk temperatures and quirky take on what tourism means. Nightlife is limited, and the dining situation not that much more advanced. But I like it. Here, more so than anywhere, you can relive the colonial age in a superb French-villa resort or palace hotel (for varying costs), take some rewarding DIY motorbike drives in the hills, and sample some of the sillier products of Vietnam tourism, like bunny statues and ‘cowboy rides’ and dream-like tree/cave hotels with red-eyed kangaroos you can tour. It’s a place that – at first glimpse – feels a bit like a new country. I think it’s the clothes. Men wear berets and suits all day Sunday, and women are in full outfits rather than the lightweight pajamas in hotter parts of the country. A local French expat said, ‘It’s more formal here, probably because of the French influence.’ Few visitors stay more than a couple days, but it makes a good alternate route between Nha Trang and Saigon.

BEST HOTEL - EVASON ANA MANDARA VILLAS DALAT
Tel 063-555-888; Le Lai St; reservation-dalat@evasonresorts.com, www.sixsenses.com; rooms from US$155
One of Vietnam’s best deals for luxury and quiet, the dreamy ten-villa, 57-room resort – soon expanding to 17 – is a thoughtful modern make-over of 1920s French villas on a hill-side location a couple kilometers west of Dalat center. Guests reach their villas on cobbled sidewalks through the forest. Part of the Evason/Six Seasons chain, each villa here holds onto its original (sometimes quirky) design. I enjoyed Villa 13, with views to the north, a great common area (with Wifi access), ‘rustic’ untreated wood floors, balconies looking to the northern valley of Dalat, TV with DVD player, an electronic click-on furnace for chilly nights, huge beds, and a claw-foot tub in the bathroom. Breakfast’s included in Nine, probably Dalat’s best restaurant – it’s ideal on the deck in morning. Nearby is a heated pool and a spa. The hotel arranges Dalat tours in vintage French cars, or – interestingly – very authentic walking tours of ‘street food’ spots around Dalat, including Chinese wonton soup, Dalat’s version of banh beo, and heated che pudding desserts – well worth signing up for. Similar conditions elsewhere – like Six Senses’ Hideaway Resort off Nha Trang go for much more. By all means try to stay a couple nights here.


BEST ATTRACTION: DIY MOTORBIKING TO ELEPHANT FALLS
Everyone goes -- meaning heaps of Vietnamese tourists on tour buses -- to nearby falls that are over commericalized and littered. I preferred spending half a day leading myself on a US$4 rented motorbike to Elephant Falls (Thac Voi; about 30km west), a dramatic falls in Nam Ha village, where you can walk down into the spray for vantage points from slick rocks. It’s more removed from the kitschy falls near Dalat – like Datanla – so there’s generally fewer visitors, plus the ride there’s fun.

To get there, drive out of the center west along 3 Thang 2 Street, taking a right at the roundabout at Hoang Van Thu St toward Cam Ly Falls. Shortly after you pass the falls (on your right) the road forks – go right towards Suoi Vang villlage (signed; not towards the Heroes Cemetery), 3-1/2km north. At Suoi Vang, the road forks again; go left 10-1/2km to Ta Nung village, where you turn right 13km to the village Nam Ha. The silkworm factory is to the left before you get to an unsigned turn to the right to the falls. If you pass the iron-grate bridge, you’ve gone a bit too far.

The falls are open 7.30am to 4.30pm. It’s about US$0.45 to enter, and there’s a large jolly Buddha to see at the adjoining Linh An Tu pagoda. Steps head down to the right of the falls, some carved from slippery rocks – go slow. A bit after the second bridge, the path forks – go left for a close-up vantage point of the main fall; go right to reach the foggy-from-the-spray base below.

BIKING TO NHA TRANG
The best way to move on from Dalat is on a bike in the backroads downhill. Talk with PHAT TIRE VENTURES (tel 063-829-422; 73 Truong Cong Dinh St; www.phattireventures.com, info@phattireventures.com) about their US$68 daytrip heading one-way to the coast.

Stopping for Now

I've been sidetracked by the mad dash of my last two or so weeks of research and abandonded this blog thing. I head home today and will be writing up Hanoi, Halong Bay, Ninh Binh, Sapa, Hue, Danang, Hoi An, Nha Trang and Dalat to expand the online guide to match 99% of most travelers' itineraries.

Meanwhile, I offer these suggestions:

DON'T BUS TO/FROM DALAT. The road is still windy and narrow -- like the ol' Hwy 1 -- and takes up eight hours of a day. 'Open buses' use minibuses, which are almost always less comfortable. A flight is $27 and takes 35 minutes. You save a day, and one of the country's hardest days of busing on your bum. The catch is that Vietnam Airlines often 'sells out' the flight way in advance. In actuality they leave four or five seats for 'VIPs' -- and you can often get one, stand-by style, as I did this morning. Just show up an hour before and see if you get lucky. If not, the buses from Dalat pass the airport and you can catch one to Saigon.

HIRE A PRIVATE CAR BETWEEN HOI AN & HUE. Many take this four-hour trip on a open bus that zooms through the Hai Van Pass, rather than going over the short scenic road, and skipping past the gates of the remarkable Bach Ma National Park. Hiring a private car costs about $70, fits four OK, and you can see the pass, stop at Lang Co beach for lunch, and hike to falls in dramatic Bach Ma. Few visitors do this, and it's worth the 'splurge.'

BIKE FROM DALAT TO NHA TRANG. Here's something interesting. Phat Tire Ventures, in Dalat, offer van/bike trips downhill from Dalat to Nha Trang which take the same amount of time as the car-sicky bus trip. Sure it's about $65, but the guides and equipment are good, and you access a new road that gets a lot of jungle/mtn/sea views. Don't go the reverse way -- they don't offer the uphill variant, actually -- as it goes way way up.

So long for now.

RR, in Saigon

HUE: Try the Food

Some travelers I meet traveling north-to-south or south-to-north across Vietnam are skipping Hue, a sleepy city about mid-way up Vietnam’s slender girth. All too often those who do come often miss its greatest attraction – not the royal tombs in the hills up the Perfume River, or the bomb-blasted Citadel in town, but the food.

I always try to fit Hue in on any trip back to Vietnam. Known for its sleepy pace and pagodas and heavy rains, Hue was Vietnam’s capital during the Nguyen Dynasty years from 1802 to 1945, when the last king turned in his funny gold and red robe and capital duties shifted back to Hanoi. Over the dynasty’s run, many kings spent most of their time writing poems, fathering children (Minh Mang had 102 wives, and more children), or designing their architectural legacies -- and in particular their tombs.

Kings were finicky, too, for their food. Over the royal years, nervous chefs churned out ever-changing dishes for kings who demanded 52-course meals. Most were adaptations of the dishes ‘commoners’ made outside the Citadel walls (supposedly numbering 1400 of Vietnam’s 1700 dishes). You won’t find many outside Hue – even in Hue-themed restaurants in Saigon or Hanoi – but the legacy still lives on in family-run alley spots here.


Breakfasts for many locals mean an unusual crunchy bowl of com hen, a spicy cool-rice dish with tiny river clams (about the size of a broken-off tip of pencil lead), peanuts, pork rinds, green onion, mint, fish sauce and peppers. 'Foreigners can't eat it,' I was warned by a local, holding his belly with a grimace. 'They get sick. People from Hanoi and Saigon too.' I already had my belly full of it -- and was feeling fine. It's not too fishy, and no spicier than some of your more milder Thai dishes. For 45 cents a bowl, and a shocked crew at Ba Hoa (Truong Dinh St, just east of Hanoi St) who interfered to mix my bowl when I hadn't mixed it adequately, it's hard to not take a chance. I've not seen this elsewhere.

Bun bo Hue is one of the city's most famous exports -- and one of the few that reach US Vietnamese restaurants' weekend menus. Like its more famous cousin pho bo, it's a beef noodle soup served with a clear beef broth but healthy doses of chili, shrimp paste and a rounded slippery noodle that slips off your chopsticks and sending dots of reddish-brown broth on your shirt. The best place in town -- I heard over and over -- is Bun Bo Hue (17 Ly Thuong Kiet St), a block south of Hanoi St. And it's quite good. Like the other cheapies I found, it's a simple concrete-floor, open-front place, with aluminum tables and trash thrown on the floor. The bowls are prepared up front -- just order, sit and await the bowl (about 50 cents).

Hue takes Buddhism a bit more seriously here than most of Vietnam -- with more monasteries than anywhere else, and the nation's most famous monks. Famously in 1963, Thich Quang Duc drove to Saigon to protest anti-Buddhist policies of the South Vietnamese government and set himself on fire on a Saigon street. Beyond the pagodas nowadays, where robed monks and apprentices break in the afternoon for volleyball games you're welcome to join, Hue's vegetarian scene is more developed than anywhere else in the country. Com chay, or vegetarian food, places pop up on riverside locations and alleys. The best though is right in the heart of the backpacker ghetto (of sorts). Tinh Tam Restaurant (24 Chu Van An St), run by a Buddhist family, serves fake meats -- the grilled 'deer' with lemongrass is superb, and only $1.50; as is the mixed fig salad served with fake-shrimp cakes to scoop it up (60 cents) -- that attract monks and a few Lonely Planet holders.

The power of guidebooks has long been known at the corner of Dien Thien Hoang and Tran Hung Dao Sts, north of the river near the Citadel walls, where two bustling-with-travelers (and locals) restaurants with 'deaf mute' owners set up with similar names (and billboards lined with quotes from Lonely Planet and Routard guides). Both are welcoming places serving cheap, Hue-style food -- and can be walked to after a tour of the Forbidden Purple City of the Citadel. The original, Lac Thien (6 Dinh Tien Hoang St) is slightly better, to my taste. They serve banh khoai (about 40 cents), a shrimp and bean sprout 'pancake' served with peanut sauce, and the (tastier) nem lui tom, a delicious shrimp salad dunked in fish sauce and served with cucumbers and rice paper you roll yourself. It's also made with vegetables, beef or chicken and costs about $1.25.

Far better (and more remote), is Cung An Dinh (177 Phan Dinh Phuong St, off the alley at 148 Nguyen Hue, several blocks south of the river), which serves bite-size banh beo, banh uot and banh nam -- variations on glutinous rice rolls coated in dried shrimp and wrapped in banana leaves. At $0.40 a pop, it's easy to try them all.

Hue does have a few fancier -- and Western-style -- restaurants too, generally at the upscale hotels. One good exception is Y Thao Garden (3 Thach Han St), a French villa locale a few blocks northwest of the Citadel's inner walls. Y Thao goes for royal-style set meals, with several local delicacies served at $8 per person. A popular start are the lightly battered eggrolls served with pomp atop a peacock-style dishes carved out of vegetables and fruit. It's good, and busy with tour groups, but for the real deal -- as the locals have always eaten it -- you have to go 'poor but luxurious,' as the local mantra dictates. Simple places, cheap prices, rich taste.

T.H.E. B.E.S.T. C.A.V.E. O.F. A.L.L. T.I.M.E.
VIETNAMESE LOVE CAVES, and pretty much every visitor to Halong Bay -- Vietnam's famed sea spot of limestone cliffs peeking up from the green sea off the coast a few hours east of Hanoi -- go on wooden junk-style ships that pay a visit to a cave or two. Today I made it to the top attraction, the 'Amazing Cave,' where a guide painfully pointed out the many forced likenesses in the stalagmites -- 'this is three elephants,' 'this is tiger,' 'this is the Boston Marathon... 1982' -- capped with a truly amazing view of the bay from a gap at half way up the mountain.

But the best cave -- of all time -- is half a country south, in the depths of Marble Mountain, just outside the country's third-largest city Danang. Visitors on tours, or with guidebooks in hand, almost always miss HELL CAVE, as my motorcycle taxi driver called it. Ticket takers -- charging about $1 for admission -- told me it was anywhere from '20 to three years old,' but the napping workers in a nook inside (sculpting figures in the limestone) make me think it's a work in progress, still.

You enter hell on a bridge over a fake pond with fake hands reaching out. The water's clear enough to show a few discarded ones laying at the bottom of the water. Inside bats squeal and triumphant lights illuinate carved figures and tall scary chambers that reach five or so storeys high. Deeper it gets goofier, with decapitated hands and heads looming from the walls, aligators eating humans hole, women getting tongues taken out by pliers, and blue-skinned demons holding up the dead on bloody tridents.

It is the best cave of all time.

I Saw the Turtle!

A crowd in Vietnam either means a group of parents waiting for kids leaving school, or a fight. In Hanoi, there's a third option, if you see a crowd on the rim of Hoan Kiem Lake (Restored Sword Lake) in the center of town: someone's seen the six-foot-long turtle that many believe doesn't exist.

Hanoi's famed lake is based on a 15th-century legend of a massive turtle who first gave a sword to the (actual) nobleman/warrior Le Loi to fight off the Chinese, then after doing so successfully, Le Loi went boating in the lake with the sword, and the turtle came and snatched it back -- then disappeared in the murky depths never to be seen again. (When I hear of the tale, I always enjoy imagining the sound of the turtle snapping at the sword -- a non-threatening, but decisive, snap, re-claiming the sword that Le Loi may or may not have wanted to return...) One of the tiny islands on the lake is 'tortoise island' with a slightly leaning, picturesque tower built in rememberance of it. In 1993, plans were made to drain the lake until some protested to the government -- at a period when not many did; scuba divers searched for turtles and none were found. All this is fun and fine, but the catch is there really are VERY LARGE turtles in the lake. Or at least one. And if spotted, expect a large crowd will gather to look.

Walking by the lake today, I saw a huge crowd gathered on the lake's northern end. Looking in -- about the place where I saw a bloated dead rat floating amidst some garbage a couple weeks ago -- huge bubbles appeared. The suddenly, a head! The head of a massive turtle. The crowd 'oohed' as if spotting a dragon decapitating a llama, the turtle slowly moved toward the center of the lake -- occasionally showing its head again. I couldn't believe my luck. I telephoned a pal in Hanoi, Nam, who said 'What? I've never seen it in my life.'



Apparently sightings are rare. The following comes from a decade-old article that speculated that IF the turtle existed it would last much longer...

"This turtle is a fascinating phenomenon, probably the biggest soft-shell in the world and certainly the most endangered," said Peter Pritchard, a renowned turtle biologist. "People in Vietnam are treating it like the Loch Ness monster, but this is not a myth. People need to treat it like a biological thing — an endangered species."

But is the turtle related to the sword-biting legend, or just a passerby? Dr Ha Dinh Duc, supposedly Vietnam's leading 'turtle expert', believes it IS the turtle -- about 560 years old now. He said...

"Yes, that's right, the same turtle," said Duc, 56, a biology professor at Hanoi National University who has studied the Hoan Kiem turtles since 1991. "Some scientists don't believe a turtle could live this long, especially in a lake so small and with so many people around, but I think so."

I do too.

Bumpkins without Barriers

VIETNAM'S BEST MUSEUM:



Hanoi's Ethnology Museum -- an awkward 15- or 20-minute drive west of the center -- is likely Vietnam's best museum and all visitors to the capital city should set aside a few hours to see it. In the two-floor white building are exhibits and videos that tell the tale of Vietnam's ethnicities, starting with the Viet (Kinh) -- or 'Vietnamese' -- who make up 86% or so of the population.

I went yesterday with Giap, a 25-year-old guy at my $12 hotel who volunteered to take me. He waved a 'no' to the ticket counter and didn't pay, and 'became one' with many of the exhibits. A couple German tourists sat on tiny bamboo stools watching a video on the tradition of non la (conical hats) as made in Chuong village, about 50km south of the capital. Giap -- who's from that area -- stepped onto the exhibit, which had various stages of the hat-making on exhibit and various tools used -- and picked up a triangular iron device and long, flatted pieces of bamboo 'paper.' He started moving the device over the bamboo. 'Make non la like this,' he said, or something. A minute later the video showed the same. The Germans, and myself, were impressed.

A country bumpkin in the city for a couple years, Giap -- who works every day at the hotel, and is in Hanoi to 'study automobiles' (to be a mechanic I think) -- may stand out a bit in some parts of ritzy Hanoi, but he was at ease in the museum. In another exhibit, he picked up rocks and hit them against a bronze gong to simulate the sounds he listened to growing up in the countryside. As we walked past mannequins with various ethic garbs on, he'd point and ID them immediately: Tay, Hmong, Giao. He knew most, if not all. At one point he sat in front of a buffalo sacrifice video engrossed.

Outside there are many rebuilt traditional structures lining a nicely manicured garden. The most irresistible is the tallest -- a Bahnar communal house, built in the fashion of a hundred-year-old, all-bamboo one from near Kontum in central Vietnam. Nearby stood a longhouse. We hopped up and sat for tea and cookies left for visitors. Giap rinsed the cups out with tea, and poured it out in a nearby 'stove area' before we drank.

At a nearby cafe, Giap -- who shares his name with North Vietnam's greatest 20th-century general -- cooed to birds in a cage effectively and flirted with two Vietnamese women as we had something cold to drink.

He speaks maybe three words of English, but it's hard to imagine a better 'guide.'

Through August, the museum has a FASCINATING exhibit dedicated to the 'subsidized economy' period from 1975 to 1986, when locals lined up with food stamps to get rice and supplies. 'Very bad,' Giap said with a frown, not that he personally remembers it. The exhibit shows 'dream' items -- like a stove brought back from someone visiting the USSR, or plastic sandals called Tien Phong which one woman sold to pay for a flight home to Hanoi from Hue. Videos and photos tell the tale of the hardship. One person said, 'Our greatest dream was to have enough food and clothes.'

Things have changed. For one thing, in 21st-century Vietnam you can have a rather anti-communist exhibit like this in plain view of Hanoi's authorities.

My Favorite Tourist

Lonely Planet author and friend Tom Downs recently said to me that pretty much any time you see old photos of a place, you see what the place was like 20 or more years before that. In other words, we -- as traveling documentarians, either by writing or camera -- tend to focus on what's already old, nostalgic. For example, while studying Russian in Moscow and St Petersburg during the 'first summer of Russia' (1992), instead of photographing grandmothers holding up toothbrushes for sale outside a metro stop -- as the Russians first clumsily toyed with free market -- I photographed onion-domed churches and Kremlin walls that haven't, and won't, change for decades. My friend Matthew Jesse Jackson, of Chicago University (and more distantly, Alabama), once said, 'Pretty much any newspaper clip you ever save ends up more interesting on what's on the back side.'

Most conversations I have in Vietnam tend to end in a local or expat observation like 'things have changed so much' or 'I bet you can't recognize it' (I lived here 10 years ago) or 'every day there's something new... it's like a whole new city.' Generally I find more what hasn't changed -- the unwieldly power cables blocking balcony views and congregating at concrete tower poles at intersections; how you hear the approach of a waiter by their sandal soles dragging on the pavement; if you stop to write a note on the street you have an onlooker or two unshyly looking over your shoulder at every word; the same decayed French colonial buildings line many streets; many motorcycle taxi guys think if they ask you four times for a ride you'll finally relent; the food's still much better than any Vietnamese restaurant outside the country; on hot days guys walk around with shirt pulled up into 'half shirts'; simple concrete red/white markers mark the distances between cities on one side of the road; people still eat on tiny sidewalk plastic stools; many transport overloaded doses of mirrors, bamboo baskets or live pigs on a motorcycle; many bicyclists pedal while sitting on the back bumper rather than up on the seats; the non la (conical hat) is everywhere; farmers work by hand; and many more.

Some things have changed too. Mini hotels are more comfortable, new office buildings look like skyscrapers in Danang, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Importantly to travelers, most cross-country 'open buses' that ply the improved highways -- but generally still overwhelmed by large vehicles and little ones -- are much better than the pile-in, smoke-spewing mammoths from a decade ago. And who gets on them has changed -- in the form of a novel, recent phenomenon: the Vietnamese tourist. They're every where. The 'open bus' that you can hop on/off from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City was once 98% foreigners, now it's mostly locals (on most buses I've been on anyway). Take a group tour -- to a cave, a tomb, a pagoda -- and guides are sometimes required to say everything in English and Vietnamese. This is new.

Most Vietnamese tourists go on group tours -- to Halong Bay, to Sapa, from top-to-bottom on big-bus tours. Not all. My favorite Vietnamese tourist I've met so far -- an architect of 'New Sagion,' wearing a foldable 'outback' hat, with the faintly Mick Jagger-1965 longish hair you see on some of the more interesting guys in their late '40s or early '50s -- sat next to me on my bus to Danang. His family went to France for a holiday, but he flew to Hue and was spending '12 days to get back to Saigon.' On his own. I didn't realize he spoke English until we saw the aftermath of an injury-free accident. 'Accident here. Motorbike fell,' he said suddenly. 'Anyone hurt?,' I wondered. 'I don't think so.'

Van is spending a day or two in places in Vietnam's southern half-- perhaps by design, perhaps not, but his English skills (and fact he didn't leave country for vacation) makes me wonder if he's a South Vietnam veteran; I didn't ask -- to photograph with the massive camera he held. He pointed out a place -- near Lang Co pass -- where he had gone two days before. 'I stayed in that guesthouse and woke up for sunrise to watch the fishermen come home. Let me show you.' He brought out a huge camera and flipped through shots of pink hues of the early sun making a black outline of wee fishing boats. 'Beautiful, yes?' He doesn't want to sell them, though he easily could. 'It's just my hobby.' He's very good at it. Pulling into Danang, he pointed out women fish sellers setting up along the waterfront. 'This is where to get seafood. Very cheap and very fresh.' He's been there before too.

I got out at Danang and he headed farther south. I forgot to ask him for his contact info.